


Adrift

by EzzyDean



Category: Free!
Genre: Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 14:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2696126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EzzyDean/pseuds/EzzyDean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sousuke finally wakes up after his last mission goes wrong.  He soon finds out he's missing more than just his memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dystopia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dystopia - Am imaginary place of total misery. A metaphor for hell.

Red floods his memories. So much red. Speckled with chips of white, globs of grey. A gooey mess of mush that he slogs through, jaw set, eyes distant. He can’t look at it. Can’t focus on anything else except the thread in front of him.

It’s so thin. So fragile. So easy to snap.

His hands reach for it and he wants to wrap it around his wrist so he doesn’t lose it. He doesn’t need to; he can feel the way it’s threaded through his body, his heart, his mind. But that extra bit of security is something he has to have.

Red pulses and swells, hot and thick against his skin, and he reaches out a hand to grab the thread.

He nearly screams when a hand reaches back.

Soft words slowly fill his mind, easing away the red, pushing it back with gentle caresses and comforting warmth. 

Blood red mush slowly gives way to pinkened clouds as he feels warm fingers weave that thread through his being.

"Makoto," his names sounds so comfortable in that voice. It sounds like it belongs there. Like he belongs there. "That’s it. Come on back to me." He lets the warmth guide him where he needs to go, lets the thread reel him back to where he should be. Lets it take him home.

His eyes fly open with a gasp and the thread snaps as purple eyes meet his.

"Kisumi," he breathes the name and for a moment he wavers as red tries to drag him back. Not the red that tried to drown him but the other red that’s just as familiar. Wine red and warm, like Kisumi, and his eyes skitter towards the man lying across from him, dark hair sweaty and damp like Makoto’s, teal eyes wide open and empty. He darts his gaze back to the pale face above him. "Rin?"

Kisumi shakes his head once.

He can’t sleep that night. Or the next. Or the next after that.

Because when he closes his eyes two shades of red compete for attention and his purple thread shatters under clumsy fingers, leaving him adrift.


	2. Anagapesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anagapesis - The feeling when one no longer loves someone they once did

"What’s it like?"

"What’s what like?"

Makoto doesn’t understand why Rin comes to him.  Well he does, since Sousuke still hasn’t woken up yet.  Maybe it’s more he doesn’t understand _how_ Rin does it.

"Falling out of love?"

"I dunno.  I never have."

Kisumi should be the logical choice since he and Rin are alike.  It would be easier for him to connect to Kisumi, to tie their threads together as opposed to searching out the unraveled threads left in Makoto.

"But, you’re with Sousuke now."

"And?"

Rin’s amusement is almost tangible, wrapping Makoto’s very being in a warm blanket.  He never did understand the way Rin’s mind worked, the way he could jump connections and spin bridges between thoughts.

"And, I dunno, I’m just worried."

Rin’s laughter is a warm bath and he soaks it in, knowing that when he opens his eyes it will be gone.  When he comes back up it will be to a world that’s missing a certain shade of red and a certain shade of teal and even with Kisumi beside him still it’s hard.  Because they’re both missing pieces of themselves that the other can’t quite fill.

"Makoto?"

Rin’s the sea and Kisumi’s the sky and without Sousuke around Makoto is left to drift alone between them.  He’s never given into loneliness much, always surrounded by people, but he can see how it’s hard to pull yourself up from the bleakness.  Hard to step into the sunlight.

"Looks like it’s time for you to go already."

Soft threads pull him gently towards the clouds and he lets them.  It’s useless to resist Kisumi; he’s always been just as stubborn as Rin after all.

"Hey, Makoto,"  Rin tugs him back for just a moment, red splashing up to meet him, "try not to worry so much, okay?"

He blinks his eyes open and feels Kisumi’s thumbs rubbing against his cheeks soothingly, wiping away the tears that are slipping from his eyes.  Kisumi is warm and Makoto shivers against him, wrapping his arms tight around him and breathing him in. 

He really doesn’t understand how Rin can still be so strong.


	3. Waking Up

"It’s to be expected."

_"You’re lucky to have even survived it."_

_"Those who make it back rarely gain all their memories again."_

_"It will take time."_

The doctors all say the same things.  It’s a miracle he’s even alive and, more or less, fully functional.  He can’t seem to remember a damn thing about who he is or what he’s done in the past.  But he remembers the basics of living.  How to cook food, dress himself, take care of himself.  He’s a lot better off than most of the people who ever come back from that side.  When he’s finally cleared to return to “normal life” he’s shipped out of the hospital and left alone in a large loft apartment that he feels like he should know, if for no other reason than they said it was his home.  Not his new home or temporary home but _his_ home.  Like he was supposed to be here.

But it felt…. empty.  He has no idea how it was possible to feel like he was missing something when he couldn’t even remember what he was supposed to have here.  But he knew it was red.  Not red red like blood.  He’d seen enough blood to last him a couple lives.  Maybe red like wine?  That felt right.  Wine in just the right light, soft and silky against his fingers.  But that didn’t make sense at all.  Wine is liquid and wet, like blood, not soft and silky like sheets clenched in fists.

Why clenched fists and sheets?

He knows logically that running his mind in circles will just make it worse, make it harder to cope and recover.  But he can’t sit still, can’t stay stationary in the too empty room filled with knick-knacks that don’t feel like him and no pictures.  Why aren’t there any pictures?  The memory of taking pictures isn’t there, exactly, but the idea of taking pictures feels so right that he finds himself searching through the bookcases, the boxes, the closet for even a single photograph.

Nothing.  Nothing.  Not a damn thing anywhere.  Even if he can’t remember his past why isn’t there anything here to try and remind him?  There are knick-knacks and souvenirs scattered about, shirts with insignia that could be from something important, but nothing truly personal.  No pictures.  No diaries.  Nothing to actually connect him to his past.

He sits at his kitchen table and stares gloomily at the chair across from him.  It’s empty but he knows it shouldn’t be.  Wine red silken threads weave through every fiber of his being but he doesn’t know why.

He may have came back from the other side but he’s starting to think that his memories aren’t the only thing that got left there.


	4. Here

Red wine paints his dream and he wakes with a jolt and a name lingering on his lips.  "Rin."  It’s the right name and somehow it feels even better on his lips than the one they told him was his own feels in his heart.  That’s what was left over there.  More important than every memory he knows is locked away.  More important than even the comfort of his own name.

"Sousuke" can forever remain a stranger’s name in his mind if he can just get back to "Rin."  He still can’t remember anything.  No idea who the name belongs to or why they apparently have such a presence in his life.  No idea why their name tastes like wine on his lips and feels like home in his heart.  He’s lost, so damn lost, adrift in the roiling sea of his own mind no anchor to ground him and no compass to lead him to safety.  

Rin is always on his mind, his dreams are fleeting landscapes of wine red silk tying him binding him blinding him, and he can feel the thread of reality slipping from his grasp like grains of sand.

So he gives in and lets Rin take him.  Take him back to where he needs to be.

The building is just a building - brick and steel and glass rising to the sky alongside it’s neighbors - but he knows.  He knows that this is where he lost himself.  This is where the very essence of who he was had been left behind and only a shell had returned from.  

He pushes inside, sees gazes all around sharpen in recognition of his wide shoulders and angry teal eyes, sees the wariness flash over the faces behind the desk in the center of the room.  Sees wine red painting his vision and fighting to surpass the blood red rage that sweeps through his veins.  Rage he doesn’t fully understand the source of but he embraces anyways.  It fits him better than the bleak nothingness that has been plaguing his body for months now.

He leans heavily on the desk and leans over them.  His size has always intimidated the people here; he doesn’t know how he knows it but it feels true so he looms over them and watches their faces drain of color when he says one word, one name that tastes sweet and feels like heaven.

"Rin."


	5. Blame Me

Sousuke finally wakes up and Rin is gone. 

Makoto isn’t entirely sure Rin was ever really “with” him in the first place.  Unsure of how much of the wine red was just like the blood red, just leftover fragments and frayed knots dyed with memories: all in his head.

Kisumi gives him a look sometimes, like he’s worried that Makoto is becoming too frayed at the edges and ready to slip off into the deep end alone.

He won’t.  They haven’t had a mission since that last one.

It’s not safe right now.  They’re fragile, according to the doctors and lab monkeys - lab monkeys that’s Sousuke’s name for them not his, how strange is that, they've all become so entwined in each other he's using their ways of talking even in his own mind - and he’s sure if they knew about Rin coming to him they would lock him away inside that harmless looking building and have their way with him.  God only knows what would happen to Kisumi if they did that.  Hell they’d probably bring him along just for good measure and more accurate tests.

So Kisumi watches him, smiles at him, talks to him.  Keeps him grounded and secure and sane.

They aren’t allowed to see Sousuke even when he wakes.  “It would only confuse him,” is what the doctors say.  They also say he’s lucky, even though he remembers nothing, because most of them barely make it out alive.

Makoto can tell they’re watching, waiting for him to crack.  He’s been an anomaly in their data, in the project since day one.  Able to connect to not only Rin but Kisumi as well.  Then Sousuke came along and the four of them practically destroyed all the previous data because Sousuke could connect with Rin even when he was connected to Makoto.  Kisumi’s connection with Sousuke was more fragile than the other connections but it was possible as well.

They broke it.  They tore it down and rebuilt it with nothing but their own determination.  Sometimes, late at night, now that Rin is gone and Sousuke is awake but not, he listens to Kisumi breathing beside him, feels his hand warm against his chest and he wonders if they blame him.  If they hate him.

If he were in their shoes he would.

When the knock comes at their door Makoto is sure that it’s someone from the facility finally come to take him away and punish him.  Test him.  Dissect him.  Who knows for sure what they'll do but he’s sure it’s the end.

The first thing Sousuke does when Makoto opens the door is punch him.  The second thing he does is pull him into a hug when tears start a scalding path down his cheeks and Kisumi watches.

Kisumi always watches them, just like Rin.

That night the three of them sleep curled up on the floor like the kids they never really were, Kisumi in the middle and Makoto and Sousuke curled against him heads inches apart on his chest.

Kisumi watches the shadows flit across the ceiling and waits.  The waiting is the hardest part but Sousuke isn’t really awake, not yet. 

It’s a comfort to feel Rin again though, even if he is drifting just out of reach.


	6. Heartbeat

It’s kind of funny that he gets trapped in memories like this.  Funny in a sad way, the kind of funny that makes Makoto’s smile falter and makes Sousuke’s jaw tense and can even make Kisumi’s eyes dim.  He hates getting stuck in them, getting pulled this way and that, but he knows he’s lucky too.  If he wasn’t getting stuck in memories of Sousuke’s fingers running down his arm or Makoto’s forehead pressed against his he would be lost completely.  Mind floating away like a balloon on the wind.

So he lets himself drift along with jerking stops tethering him in the memories.  Each memory seems to playback in real time but somehow he knows that each flashes by in the span of next to nothing, each colorful splash of his past dripping into the empty spaces between the steady lub-dub of his heart.

He sinks down into the look of wonder on his face mirrored on Makoto’s when they connected for the first time.  His mind stretching out, weaving a bridge to Makoto’s, red threads carefully latching on and sinking into Makoto’s very being.

Red splashes his mind, jerks it across the heavy beat and drops it into the next space.  Makoto’s cheeks flushed as they press their lips together, both clumsy and sweet and far too awkward.  Both knowing that they shouldn’t be doing this.  They were partners for the project but there had been very specific parameters and rules.  But Rin never was one to follow rules when he could be following his passion and Makoto was always happy to get swept along with him.

Another beat.  Another jerk.  Another splash and he’s staring into the eyes of an irate researcher.  They’ve been on countless missions, each more successful than the last, sending their minds out into some other space far away yet connected to their own.  Makoto leads and Rin follows close behind, tethers him to their reality.  Rin is Makoto’s safe haven and his only way back home.  Makoto trusts his life, his mind, his soul to Rin and with that trust comes his love.  How can trust work any other way, Rin asks the researcher, watching as her face turns shades of red with her frustration.

Lub-dub.  Kisumi’s there, fingers dancing along Makoto’s spine as they sprawl on the couch.  He was supposed to be a punishment.  A reminder to Rin and Makoto about how things were.  About how things were supposed to be.  To show them that Rin and Makoto could be separated if needed.  But Rin did not give up that easily.  Makoto aimed to please, wanted to keep from rocking the boat too much, and tried to follow their rules.  The first time Kisumi connected to him Rin was still there too.  Rin could feel Kisumi, feel pinks and purples and sunset warmths twining through Makoto, seeking Rin out, twisting around the reds and pulling him in too. 

Makoto and Kisumi never should have been able to connect in the first place.  They were anomalies from the start, freaks in a system that most people didn’t even know existed.

Teal wipes away the sunset and drags him into a new silence.  _Sousuke_.  Rin wasn’t even supposed to have ever known him but the moment their eyes met lightning crackled in Rin's mind and even Makoto flinched at the sensation.

He watches as moments, days, months, pulse by in heartbeats.

Kisses, hugs, nights spent curled around each other.  They broke everything they were set to test.  All data in regards to them was skewed.  The four of them were nearly unstoppable.

Lub-dub.  Makoto freezes.  Sousuke does too.  Rin reels against them both, caught between green and teal, purple reaching out for him, trying to help him break through.  There’s no time left and he refuses to hesitate.  He snaps the connection, launching Sousuke to safety and buying Kisumi time to pull Makoto back. 

He wanders.  But he refuses to lose.  Refuses to be lost.

He talks to Makoto, wants to talk to Sousuke, can’t find the strength to talk to Kisumi for fear of what he’ll learn.

Teal floats by him and he latches on in surprise, he can feel the broken pieces of himself still in Sousuke, a shattered compass leading him in circles and he waits.

Sousuke will let him in soon enough and when he does Rin will take Sousuke back, remind him of red wine against his lips.  Lead him to green meadows under sunsets.  He’ll wait until warm fingers reach out and tangle themselves in him again and pull him out of the pregnant pauses between heartbeats.

Lub-dub.  Makoto.

Lub-dub.  Kisumi.

Lub-dub.  _Sousuke_.


	7. Come Home

Kisumi wakes up, Sousuke warm against one side and Makoto gone from the other.  He’s not even sure when he finally fell asleep last night and he reaches out for Makoto on instinct, sending his mind down the path that spans between them without a second thought when he feels the cool sheets beside him.  It’s only when he stretches himself as far as he can go awake like this that he sits up, worried, and accidentally wakes Sousuke.

"Makoto’s gone." 

Hearing those two words is all it takes to snap Sousuke fully awake and they’re both on their feet.  It seems almost silly to search the small apartment when they can both feel how empty it is but they do.

Because Makoto doesn’t just _vanish_.  He’s stable.  Dependable.  He’s the calm spot in the storm of their lives.

Kisumi lets out a shaky sigh and holds his head in his hands, staring at the floor as if the patterns in the carpet will lead him to Makoto.

"Can’t you reach out to him?  Find him and pull him back?"

"It doesn’t work that way for us.  Especially not if he severed the connection on purpose."

"Is that what happened?"

"I don’t know for sure.  But it feels that way.  It’s all shattered and broken and scattered.  When I search for him it’s like pieces of glass reflecting bits of light in the distance.  They’re hard to find unless it’s the right angle and even then I keep getting pricked when I try to grasp them."

Sousuke joins him on the couch, presses into his side, and Kisumi takes a shuddering breath.  How does he explain that he feels like he’s suddenly lost in a forest with a compass that simply spins around and around, broken and useless, unable to find north.

He doesn’t know how to explain because that’s not quite it, not quite right.  Because he’s not the compass.  He’s north.  He’s home.  He’s where the compass points to.  Makoto is the one lost.  Sousuke is lost.  Kisumi is _right_ _here_.

But he feels the loss of the other end of the line as if someone had literally taken a chunk out of him and left it empty.

"How can I pull him back if he doesn’t want me to?"

Sometimes what Makoto and Rin do to each other scares him, leaves him breathless and lonely and back on that street corner from so long ago.  Sometimes he sees Sousuke and Rin together and wonders if he is nearly that radiant when he is with Makoto.  Sometimes he’s afraid they won’t need him anymore.  Rin is so much brighter than he is, so radiant and strong.

He and Sousuke don’t know what to do.  What to do about Makoto.  About Rin.  What to do with themselves or each other.  Maybe he is a little more lost than he thought.

Sousuke’s quiet is so much different than Makoto’s that it’s practically a physical presence in Kisumi’s body, tugging at his muscles and weighing him down.  Kisumi’s energy is so much more concentrated and in your face than Rin’s and it’s hard for Sousuke to keep up with him.

They don’t quite fit right alone.  Sousuke’s edges are too rough and Kisumi is too flexible for them to mesh properly.  But Kisumi does manage to help Sousuke settle a little, to box up his thoughts a little more neatly, to weed out some of the shattered pieces of his compass and glue together parts that still sing with Rin’s presence.

It’s three days before Kisumi can fall asleep again.  Three days with exhaustion slowly creeping up on him, ready to stab him in the back and send him off into a landscape of colorless emotions eager to drag him under and drown him.  Three days of a tenuous connection between Sousuke and Kisumi.  Three days of Sousuke trying to keep Kisumi grounded and now he can understand why Rin was always so tired after missions: keeping someone’s mind safe was exhausting.

Sousuke finally slips into sleep only moments after Kisumi does.  Rin immediately pounces on him, mind wrapping him in a cocoon of warmth that tastes like wine, and he sinks into Rin’s embrace.  He breathes deep, mind finally clearer than it has been for what seems like a lifetime and he can feel Rin’s smile.

Makoto hesitates, reaching out for Kisumi only to pull himself back at the last moment, unsure and worried.  They had promised long ago: no undue risks no drastic heroics and he wasn’t sure that Kisumi would understand.  That Kisumi would acknowledge that they had all needed Rin to come back.  They all needed each other to survive.

Kisumi balks, shattered pieces of their connection gathered up around him like a fragile shield barely held together with superglue and hope.  He can’t go back to how he was, who he was, before he met Rin and Makoto and Sousuke.  He can’t be shattered and broken again and again, left to pick up pieces that leave his heart and mind bleeding even as his hands remain clean.  He can’t.  He refuses to.

"Please," he can hear the worry in Makoto’s voice.  Feel the guilt and sorrow reach out towards him, hesitant and worried.  "Please Kisumi.  Come get me."  Green threads inch towards him, wind through the cracks in his shield and reach out for him, asking for forgiveness and understanding, radiating trust and love.  "Bring us home."


End file.
